THE SWEET HEREAFTER

By RICHARD SCHICKEL

No one knows why the school bus swerved off the road and into the lake. All that is known by the inhabitants of the profoundly isolated small town in British Columbia, already buried in snow and melancholy, is that 14 of their children are dead and many more are injured. After such tragedy, what redemption?

None, of course. Unless you can find cold comfort in cold cash. Which is why a sardonic God invented negligence lawyers. Russell Banks, author of the novel from which Atom Egoyan derived The Sweet Hereafter, has, however, improved on His handiwork, creating in Mitchell Stephens (Ian Holm) a man who chases settlements with a chills-and-fever passion that can be explained not by greed but by the suppurating wounds life has inflicted on him. The man, whom Holm plays with superbly controlled fanaticism, wants compensation from an unfair universe but finds momentary relief in squeezing more readily available targets.

It is necessary for the townsfolk, who are stupid and sinful in more ordinary ways, to avoid being drawn into his vengeful scheming, to find a sweet hereafter in which they can at least partly heal. It is a young woman (Sarah Polley)--surely the daughter Stephens wishes he might have had--who opens them to that state of grace in this solemn, subtly structured, beautifully acted and ultimately hypnotic movie.

--R.S.